Parameters MMP 220 Multimedia Programming This adapted material was prepared for students in MMP220 as as part of a curriculum redesign project funded by National Science Foundation grant # Co PI’s Christopher Stein and Jody Culkin BMCC CUNY The material in this handout is taken from “Learning to Program with Alice” a project supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant NSF , NSF , and NSF Contact Wanda Dann: Stephen Cooper: Randy Pausch: and Don Slater:

A beetle band Our task is to create an animation for a bug band as an advertisement for their next concert.

Storyboards Each bug band member will perform a solo. Do together Do in order georgeBeetle move up georgeBeetle move down play sound Do together Do in order ringoBeetle move up ringoBeetle move down play sound Do together Do in order paulBeetle move up paulBeetle move down play sound Do together Do in order lennonBeetle move up lennonBeetle move down play sound

Demo Ch04Lec2BeetleBand-v1 Concepts illustrated – To play a sound, a sound file must first be imported into Alice. (Alice is not a sound editor.) – This code is only for georgeBeetle. – Three more methods (one for each band member) will be needed!

A Better Solution Four versions of very similar code seems a bit tedious. The only things that change are the beetle and the music that plays. A better solution is to write a more flexible method.

Parameters Built-in methods provide flexibility by providing parameters such as distance and direction. Parameters allow you to pass in values (arguments). – Example Parameters: distance, direction Arguments: 0.5 meters, 0.5 seconds

Kinds of Parameters Alice provides several kinds of parameters that can be used in your own methods.

The storyboard In this example, we can write just one method and use parameters to specify: which band member is to perform and which music should be played. solo Parameters: bandMember, music Do together Do in order bandMember move up bandMember move down play music

Demo Ch04Lec2BeetleBand-v2 Concepts illustrated –Enter name and select the type of each parameter bandMember is an Object parameter music is a Sound parameter – A parameter acts as a placeholder in the instruction – Arguments are passed to the parameter in the call to the method

A Number parameter Add a Number parameter to specify the height the bandMember jumps up and down. Note that the call to the method must now include an argument for the height.

Assignment Read Chapter 4 Section2 – Parameters